Blog Archives

Oft Asked Question ~ Part One

6/30/2022

Pastor Paul

(With thanks to Joan Bel Geddes)
The question: “Why is there such a thing as evil?” is really much too big a question for any one answer to explain. There are so many different kinds of evil – physical (pain, sickness); emotional (sorrow, fear, anger, resentment); moral and spiritual (bigotry, selfishness, crime, hate, sin) – and each of them, and each example of them, has different causes.

Some evils are simply due to the fact that we are finite creatures living in a still unfinished, evolving world. The limitations on our understanding and abilities make us suffer. For example, the diseases we haven’t yet learned to conquer, and the injustices we haven’t yet learned (or firmly enough decided) to prevent. Those are challenges we haven’t yet surmounted. But as humanity (both the individual human being and the human race as a whole) grows and becomes wiser, such evils can be diminished, even abolished. (Can be but might not be –because we are free to do things or not do things, and evils can’t be abolished until people are willing to do what is necessary to abolish them.)

Our love and knowledge are still very incomplete (“now we see in a glass dimly”), but maybe that isn’t the fault of love or knowledge (in short, God’s fault). Love and knowledge must be discovered, appreciated, understood, and applied before happiness can be complete.

Maybe that’s why we’re here: to learn to do that.

Oh No, I Insist!

6/23/2022

Pastor Paul

When I was interim pastor in Westport at the Saugatuck Congregational Church they had a summer tradition of moving their 8:30 am chapel service to the beach where they held a service in cooperation with another UCC church and the United Methodist Church. While I loved it because we rotated preaching responsibilities I was not a fan. I am not a beach person, didn’t appreciate the sand, having to have two sets of clothes (one beach suitable and one for the 10:00 am service in the air conditioned sanctuary), competing with the sound of boats, gulls, picnickers (in a place where to be heard already required a LOUD voice) and the beating sun causing salty sweat to roll into my eyes. Did I mention I was not a fan? My co-pastor colleague was attempting to get our involvement to cease. He argued that we had air conditioning and it was far more comfortable to worship in the church. I agreed largely because the folk who attended at 10:00 am were like me not fans of heat, sweat or sand, had mobility or hearing issues and, like me, find the place of worship is important to our sense of sacredness. I love churchy places. I have rarely found outdoors worship – no matter the specifics -- to support worship, lovely and interesting though they may be. But for the two summers that I was in Westport I did those services and then happily rushed to the church for my “real” worship.

I happened to mention my feelings regarding the beach services to a member of the church who was a regular attender and donor of a sound system because he found hearing a challenge at the beach without it. He was a bit taken aback by my lack of enthusiasm for something he found so wonderful. Why did I do them if I disliked them so much? And therein is my point.

I did those services week after week not because I liked them or because when I wasn’t preaching I didn’t wish I was anywhere else. Week after week I did them because he and others did love them and to be supportive of them. I did them because there are times in life when it is right and good to do something not because I want/need/like to do it but because it’s important and meaningful for someone else who is important to me. Although I get a much fuller sense of God in a “church building” than on the beach doesn’t absolve me of the demand to be gracious out of love. Just because music doesn’t always “do it for me” doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it for the fact that people I love, are moved by it.

It seems that our society is moving away from the altruism that is required for communal and faithful living. So much seems about me and what I want. Jesus is always challenging us to love God and self and neighbor equally. In Mathew he instructs that if a neighbor demands your coat, give him your shirt also. That is a requirement of our faith to value the needs and sensibilities of others as highly as our own. It’s an embodiment of the traffic stalemate that often happens when I reach an intersection at the same time as another driver and we both indicate to the other that they should proceed. I always chuckle to myself when that happens, respecting another and having it returned and I wonder why all of life can’t be like that?

We should insist as Jesus does.

Gosh Darn Air Conditioner !

6/16/2022

Pastor Paul

A few years ago, I remember hearing an architectural anthropologist talking about something so obvious that it completely escaped my attention. However, upon hearing it I smacked my head with an “of course.” He was saying that one of the most significant changes to the sense of neighbor and neighborhood came with the advent of the air conditioner.

His point made me immediately flashback to stories my mother told me about growing up in the 1920’s in New York City, and matched by my experience growing up in Milford, Connecticut in the 1950-60’s. In the spring and summer weather when it was warm/hot most houses were uncomfortably warm, even with fans in the windows. In New York the stoop became the “comfortable room” and on a hot summer day/night stoops were crowded with people, streets filled with kids playing stickball, ringolevio, jump rope. People in multi-family New York apartments (my mom’s was a three-family house) often sat on the stoop with their housemates and folk from houses on either side, parents of playmates and others would gather to chat, share a drink, a little “nosh” and the local gossip. People knew one another, people knew everyone’s kids and their names. Recipes, opinions, tools, cups of sugar were shared, home maintenance tasks were discussed, and problems solved by the collective wisdom. They were an informal “block watch” before the term existed. They knew about and cared for one another. They got to know people, who like them were from foreign countries, spoke English through thick accents. And they learned about “the other” and they learned about their common longings, dreams, and struggles. They turned foreigners into friends.

It was repeated in 50-60’s Milford. Even the elderly couple next door and the one across the street were often porch (houses in Milford didn’t have stoops!) mates of my parents. All the people within shouting distance of my mom, knew our family. But slowly air conditioners began to appear, and the neighbors began to disappear. Now the cool comfort of the den lured my neighbors to relate to their television on a hot summer night rather than the families around them. We were one of the last to get an air conditioner – but so many had already disappeared it went virtually unnoticed. My dad preferred to stay in, my mom, a New Yorker at heart, continued to prefer to sit on the porch/stoop. But very few joined her. When she left that neighborhood in 2017 no one was on the porch and she knew the names of only a handful of the people on either side of her house.

The lawyer in Luke asks Jesus, “and who is my neighbor” because he doesn’t know. We sadly don’t either. The architectural anthropologist noted that our sense of community began to break down at that point and we are now a culture of folk who prefer being inside our own homes to being outside where others are. (I might add that I heard this analysis 25 years or more ago and the use of cell phones, internet, streaming services and Covid have compounded the issue.) Oh, the loss when we installed the new Fedders air conditioner!

Churches stopped stoop sitting a long time ago. We know folk inside the doors. We spend lots of time in the hallowed, sacred, traditional walls. We love our church home and are quite welcoming to folk who venture in. But we don’t spend a lot of time sitting on the porch, seeking out our neighbor, getting to know the folk around us and consequently creating a curiosity about what happens in our home. I am not just referring to those on Ledge Hill Road, but those on the street where we live. What do we know about our neighbors in other parts of Guilford, or Durham, or Branford or (agh) New Haven, Hartford or Waterbury? What do we know about our neighbors in Mexico, Somalia, Ukraine or Malaysia?

Too often our churches prefer living in the air conditioned comfort of our habitat and decline Jesus’ mandate to go out into the heat of life, where people cry out for a genuine engagement that leads to understanding, compassion, caring. We avoid going into the places that may make us sweat for the Gospel. And we therefore rob the world full of our neighbors of the joy of the Gospel of God’s love and we deprive ourselves of the fullness of life in getting to know and love those outside our doors.

We should try it – the air out there is rich with possibility. Anyone for a neighborhood game of stickball?

Knit 2, Purl 2 - Repeat

6/9/2022

Pastor Paul

In 1962, the year I turned 10, my Nanny (Rebecca – my maternal grandmother) who had been working her way through her nine grandchildren offering the chance to learn to knit – offered my cousin Leslie and me the opportunity. Despite my father’s rolling eyes and negative comments and the fact that my two older male cousins had shown zero interest, Leslie and I eagerly accepted. The four cousins who were older had taken to the art easily. Leslie and I thought it would be a cinch for us as well. What Nanny and we hadn’t taken into account was our handedness. Both Leslie and I were the only lefties in the entire family. She had an advantage in that she was actually ambidextrous with left handed leanings. I am a true lefty who according to my mother from the very beginning always reached for things with my left hand.

Leslie was able to adapt enough to learn the basics. But despite Nanny’s best attempts at reversing her handedness to accommodate mine it was a challenge all around. I just couldn’t get my fingers to do what my eyes saw my Nanny attempting to get her fingers to do in the reverse of her normal knitting method! Frustration won the day. My knitting career a blip on the screen.

Fast forward to 2016 when Barbara, a member of the Plantsville Congregational UCC Prayer Shawl Ministry and expert fabric artist, bored by the same prayer shawl knit with the same yarn to the same size and look, challenged the group to try a few new things. She publicized the start of a new group open to all knitters of all ability levels. Barbara – a retired Special Education teacher in Waterbury – was always someone who loved to teach. She got some of the women to join her and started them on some new projects. During a coffee hour one Sunday, three of us guys cornered Barb and started ribbing her: “Hey, what about the guys! “Where’s the equality?” “How come it’s only for women!” We all laughed – we were so proud of ourselves.

Barbara didn’t miss a beat. “You guys can join us – or do you want to have your own group?” We all looked at one another and her (with her cat swallowed the canary look that we would discover was a standard affect). She had called our bluff. We all started joking and then one of the guys said he was a lefty and that his wife won’t even try to show me how. The other man said, “I am left handed too!” “Ditto!” I added. Barb started to nervously laugh, “Well, it’ll be a challenge, but I am willing to give it a try.”

Well, when I retired four months ago, the Men’s Knitters (four of us known as the Knit Pickers) were still gathering for two hours every Monday afternoon. Sadly, our guru, instructor, cheerleader, risk taker, and dear friend Barb died in December of 2021 following heart surgery. She has left a tremendous hole in the fabric of my life. This Saturday will be her memorial service – a gathering of people on the lawn of the Plantsville Church when we will sit under a tent on the occasion of “National Knit in Public Day.” We will knit, talk, laugh, share, and honor Barbara who taught me not only how to knit but also demonstrated the blessing of how to knit people together.

Now, whenever I knit two, purl two I am in communion with Nanny, Barb, the Knit Pickers, and God. They are incorporated into every stitch, part of every project I keep, gift, or donate. They are all manifestations of love and therefore too valuable to hoard. Such love is a blessing that needs to be spread around – gifted to others.

(And by the way all three of the Knit Pickering lefty guys knit right handed much to Barbara’s relief!)

The Worst of the Seven?

6/2/2022

Pastor Paul

As a recent retiree I find myself in conversation with others who are “retired.” Most find this new phase of life challenging, provocative, exciting, relaxing. Occasionally, however, I have heard post-career living described as “awfully boring” or “deadly.”

I am perplexed by the concept of life as “boring/deadly” and one of my favorite author/theologians Frederick Buechner has this to say:
As ACEDIA [apathy, disinterest, inertia] BOREDOM is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. It deserves the honor.
You can be bored by virtually anything if you put your mind to it, or choose not to. You can yawn your way thorough Don Giovanni or a trip to the Grand Canyon or an afternoon with your dearest friend or a sunset. There are doubtless those who nodded off at the coronation of Napoleon or the trial of Joan of Arc or when Shakespeare appeared at the Globe in Hamlet or Lincoln delivered himself of a few remarks at Gettysburg. The odds are that the Sermon on the Mount had more than a few of the congregation twitchy and glassy-eyed.
To be bored is to turn down cold whatever life happens to be offering you at the moment. It is to cast a jaundiced eye at life in general including most of all your own life. You feel nothing is worth getting excited about because you are yourself not worth getting excited about.
To be bored is a way of making the least of things you often have a sneaking suspicion you need the most.
To be bored to death is a form of suicide.+

Oh Lord, I know that death comes to all of us, but it seems particularly sad when it is due to our own unwillingness to see life with eyes of wonder, amusement and involvement. Aid me in the gracious pursuit of everything gifted me, every moment I live – that I might be fully alive.

+ from Listening to Your Life, © 1992 Harper San Francisco, page 142

Messages from the Pastor

Oft Asked Question ~ Part One

Oh No, I Insist!

Gosh Darn Air Conditioner !

Knit 2, Purl 2 - Repeat

The Worst of the Seven?

Archives